Archinect - News2015-03-03T17:38:11-05:00http://archinect.com/news/article/93502802/la-mayor-talks-urbanism-and-mass-transit-with-architecture-critic-christopher-hawthorne
LA Mayor talks urbanism and mass transit with architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne Amelia Taylor-Hochberg2014-02-14T18:06:00-05:00>2014-02-17T19:53:01-05:00<img src="http://cdn.archinect.net/images/514x/6h/6hcw380ewv5k92mz.jpg" width="514" height="396" border="0" title="" alt="" /><p>Last night on the bucolic hilltop campus of Occidental College, Los Angeles Mayor&nbsp;Eric Garcetti spoke with the Los Angeles <em>Times</em> architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne, about the state of L.A. urbanism. This broad topical platform positioned Hawthorne's interview not as a political interrogation, nor as a staged public appearance, but as a relaxed discourse for Garcetti to mention policy while riffing on the kind of place he believes L.A. is becoming. You can review Archinect's live-tweets of the event <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23oxyurbanism&amp;src=typd&amp;f=realtime" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here</a>.</p><p>The discourse of L.A. urbanism is often bogged down by insufficient comparisons and false dichotomies -- sprawl vs. density, cyclists vs. drivers, liberals vs. libertarians, east vs. west, etc. -- that doggedly try to force the region into the conventions of other, completely incomparable cities. Early on, Hawthorne made clear that "Los Angeles" has to be thought of on the "regional scale", and shouldn't copy the developmental models of radically different cities. Garcetti ce...</p>